Monday, July 16, 2012

Cohort Love

The ProTeach program at UF gave me tons of skills, experiences, great teachers and awesome papers to write (exaggeration), but the best thing I got out of the program was 24 new best friends (awwww). Our cohort is made up of 25 students. We took nearly every class together and did every field experience together during junior year and senior year. I still remember the first day of class and how quiet and awkward it was. There were a lot of shy smiles and quiet hellos. Compare that to our first day of class senior year when our poor professor couldn't get a word in because we were so chatty and it's crazy to see how close we've all gotten!

Also- make shirts. Nothing bonds people like wearing the same shirt.

Here are 76 reasons why it's great to be in Cohort 76 (just kidding, I only wrote 5)

1) Our Facebook group

This is the first thing to put together once you're in a cohort. It started out as a place to find out if that assignment was supposed to be 100 pages double spaced or single spaced, but it evolved to be a place where we could share funny stories, post teacher resources, complain about ridiculous things in our lives, and just bond!

2) Holidays

As many of you know, holidays are ok as adults, but as a teacher, they are fifteen times more fun! We celebrate everything and we go big. Arbor day may be looked over by most adults, but in a classroom, we do a weeklong unit on trees, the environment, the history of Arbor day, and why it's the best holiday ever. In our cohort, we celebrated Christmas with a giant secret santa potluck and we all got roses from the token boy in our cohort on Valentine's Day. Jealous?

Christmas party!

One boy and 24 girls on Valentine's Day. Jake is the best!

3) We understand each other

There's just something special about a group of people that are going through the same thing you're going through. We bonded pretty quickly about the way people respond to us when we say our major. Everything from "Oh, that's great. Teaching is my back up!" to "So what do you do all day? Color?" to "Why do you even need classes for teaching elementary school? Don't you know how to add and read?" to "But you could make so much money doing something else..." Trust me, we've heard it all. Which is why it's so nice when someone understands us when we say "So I think the student I'm working with has an LD so we had to do an RTI and since he's an ELL he already had a 504, but not an IEP so IDK I just KEO and RLP and THGM, you know?" Ok those last three aren't real, but you get it. Teachers speak in code. It's confusing.

For real though.

4) We have fun together

I kid you not when I say we have all become best friends. We're in each other's weddings, celebrate birthdays together, go out on weekends together, set up intense Bachelorette brackets, go shopping, and eat. We eat a lot.

A little photo shoot outside Olive Garden

The first wedding with many more to come!

No explanation for this one...

5) We love each other

At the end of the day, we just really love each other. We have been through so much in two years together and I wouldn't trade our time together for the world! I feel so lucky to have met these wonderful teachers and I can't wait to see where we all go. I'm already jealous of their future students and am mentally planning trips to visit so I can steal ideas ;)